The field of this invention is that of sockets for mounting integrated circuit units and the invention relates in particular to sockets for use in testing of such integrated circuit units.
It is customary to use sockets with metal contacts for mounting integrated circuit (IC) units on circuit boards and in the case where such sockets are to be employed for example for a burn-in test (accelerated test) it has been conventional practice to provide an external resistance for each IC terminal pin.
In the conventional arrangement, a plurality of the conventional sockets are arranged on a circuit mounting board. An external resistance is connected with each contact of each socket and each IC socket contact is connected with the test circuit through those external resistance components. Typically the external resistance is not required for the contacts for the source voltage pin and the ground voltage pin of the IC socket. In a burn-in test, a plurality of such mounting boards prepared in this manner are placed within and heated in a test oven.
In that conventional arrangement, the assembly operation was complicated because of the large number of external resistances to be installed on the mounting boards. In addition the area of the mounting boards occupied by the external resistances is large with the result that the mounting density is frequently not very high.
Such a problem is not avoided whether the resistance components constitute fixed resistors, variable resistors, or pattern resistances, etc.